Experimental Investigation of Connection Details on the Cyclic Performance of All-steel Tubular Buckling Restrained Braces

Abstract

To eliminate the geometrical defects and to reduce the damage caused by out-off-plane rotation of the end portion of the conven-tional buckling restrained braces, as well as introducing a new way to facilitate the construction and installation process, the exper-imental behavior of 5 proposed specimens as new type of all-steel tubular buckling restrained braces (AST-BRB) under cyclic axial loads was studied.The proposed specimens consist of a steel tube as a load bearing member (core), which is placed inside a larger tube as a buckling restraining member (pod). At the two ends of the core member, different end details and connection (compared to the common BRBs) are provided as the elastic transitional region. The performance of the specimens were evaluated based on indices, such as damage mode, repeatable behavior, adjusted strength factors, load-bearing capacity, and cumulative inelastic displacement.The evaluation of the results indicated that, the specimens, which welded variable cross-section steel lids at both ends of the core, have superior seismic performance. The superior specimens, for all cycles with larger displacements of the yielding displacement, exhibited a stable hysteresis behavior in bearing of cyclic loads. The bearing pressure was about 1.07 times greater than the tensile load. The cumulative inelastic axial displacements of these specimens is at least 209 times of their yield displacement. Meanwhile, they can tolerate at least 140 % compressive load and 10 % greater tension loads relative to the nominal capacity of the core individual.